Last night, Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon had the honor of dressing “the greatest athletes in the world,” as he describes the dancers of New York City Ballet—along with the lion’s share of attendees of the company’s Fall Fashion Gala. Now in its 11th year, the event founded by Sarah Jessica Parker and inaugurated by a collaboration with Valentino has seen the likes of Christopher John Rogers, Hanako Maeda, and Herrera herself collaborate with the dance company to envision new costumes for contemporary ballets by living choreographers.

To commemorate its 75th anniversary season, the company took its gala evening in a different direction by staging two existing ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, its late founding choreographers. The latter’s Glass Pieces, staged alongside excerpts from Balanchine’s Who Cares?, is an ode to the city that gave the choreographers and their company a home. Set to an ebullient score by George Gershwin, Who Cares? makes Gordon the inaugural fashion designer the 75-year-old company has commissioned to create costumes for a Balanchine production.

“It felt like the perfect ballet for a fashion designer to take on,” Wendy Whelan, the company’s associate artistic director, says of the commission. “It’s very metropolitan; it’s very upscale, like New York City. Wes even said, ‘I’ve heard it’s like martinis at the Rainbow Room.’ He felt perfect with his elegance and New York sophistication.”

Gordon, who was appointed by Herrera to helm her namesake fashion house five years ago, has a deep love for New York City. The brand, of course, was founded here in 1981, and he calls it “the greatest city in the world,” divining seemingly endless inspiration from its architectural marvels and artists—including those within the dance company. Gordon is no stranger to the repertory as a longtime audience member, but the leap from watching in the first tier to working in the costume shop is a big one.

In an interview with Surface, Whelan was joined by New York City Ballet director of costumes Marc Happel, principal dancer Indiana Woodward, and Gordon to share a behind-the-scenes look at how the commission came to life.

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In 2019, Studio PCH celebrated the opening of the Nobu Hotel Los Cabos, the first Mexico outpost of the chef-multihyphenate’s namesake hospitality enterprise. Studio PCH founder and principal Severine Tatangelo, who collaborated with architecture firm WATG, seamlessly blended Japanese minimalism with quintessentially Mexican materials—just don’t call any aspect of the Nobu empire “fusion.”

“Still, nobody knows the Nobu style of food. It’s kind of our joke: if something is fusion, there is confusion too,” said chef Nobu Matsuhisa, emphasizing the clarity of vision in the property’s cuisine and design direction, while in conversation with Surface during the summer at his Los Cabos property. Surface was on-site for the ribbon-cutting of the Nobu Residences, a new 60-key addition executed by Studio PCH and WATG.

After working as an interior designer in New York, San Francisco, and Florence for more than a decade, Whitney Krieger is crossing a major milestone by launching Soft Witness, an intimately personal collection of furniture and lighting made in meticulous collaboration with Italian artisans. Each piece is an amalgamation of form and feeling that sparks an emotional response, from a plush sofa whose modularity embodies freedom and comfort to a series of hand-blown Murano glass pendants whose deceptively simple crescent bulbs evoke the elegance of her late mother.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Van Gogh Museum’s Event Gets Gatecrashed by Pokémon TCG Scalpers in a Prime Example of “Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” [PCGamer]

Jónsi From Sigur Rós Makes a Volcano: “It Goes Straight Up the Arse to Rattle Your Bones” [The Guardian]

Paris Is Crawling With Bedbugs. They’re Even Riding the Trains and a Ferry. [CBS]

Someone Tried to Bring an Emotional Support Alligator Into the Phillies Games [Philadelphia Inquirer]

A Mexican Journalist Went Viral After He Presented “Alien Bodies” to Congress. Now He Is Accused of Plundering Them From Ancient Sites [Artnet News]

Earlier this week, luminaries across art and culture descended on Jazz at Lincoln Center to celebrate Aperture’s 2023 Gala, the annual benefit supporting the photography nonprofit and publisher. Enthusiasm was high as Cathy Kaplan, the chair of Aperture’s board of trustees, spoke about the organization’s move to a much larger space on the Upper West Side. LaToya Ruby Frazier then introduced the night’s honoree Dawoud Bey, the groundbreaking American artist whose evocative photographs mine the histories of marginalized Black communities. The night also featured performances by the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra and a live auction of works to support Aperture’s programming.

When was it? Oct. 3

Where was it? Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York

Who was there? Awol Erizku, Ryan McGinley, Hank Willis Thomas, Joel Meyerowitz, Gillian Laub, Nicole Fleetwood, Carrie Mae Weems, Tommy Kha, Lyle Ashton Harris, Kara Walker.

When: Until Oct. 15

Where: Blunk Space, Point Reyes Station, CA

What: Steven Johanknecht has always drawn inspiration from abstraction, from the De Stijl movement to the work of Anni and Josef Albers. “It’s been my natural instinct to depict the world in abstract forms,” he says, “and my approach is to start from pure abstraction rather than abstract reality.” For the inaugural show at Blunk Space, a gallery devoted to preserving the legacy of late American sculptor J.B. Blunk, the Commune co-founder presents a series of small abstract paintings alongside the blankets and rugs produced in collaboration with Christopher Farr they inspired. The show also features a collection of more than 30 bowls and platters by American woodturner Nile Wertz and a series of ceramic cobalt-glazed Blunk Cups inspired by the sculptor’s VW flatbed pickup truck.

Vitra is a Swiss furniture company, known worldwide for creating innovative products with iconic designers. Vitra’s catalog includes furniture, lighting, and objects from mid-century titans Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Verner Panton, Alexander Girard. and Jean Prouvé, as well as works from lauded designers Antonio Citterio, Jasper Morrison, Alberto Meda, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and Hella Jongerius. Vitra products are installed worldwide by architects and designers in living, working, and public spaces that inspire comfort, engagement, and productivity.

Surface Says: The Swiss furniture brand’s eye for comfort, sleekness, and versatility makes it a standout in a crowded market of beloved brands; through their collaborations with the industry’s top minds, Vitra goes the extra mile.

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